Popular Consultations Research Articles

Problemas de la representación política y de la participación directa en la democracia

The objective of this work is to recover the direct participation of the citizens as a resource to strengthen the current democracy. From forms of participation typical of ancient democracy, it is considered that popular consultations (so called referendums and plebiscites), popular legislative initiatives and citizen candidacies are alternatives for direct participation in society that can make more genuine the representation of social interests. In addition to convening and giving citizens the possibility of participation without many intermediaries, they encourage deliberation, transparency, political responsibility and accountability.

A vote to derail extraction: popular consultation and resource sovereignty in Tolima, Colombia

In July 2013, a consulta popular (referendum) was organised by municipal authorities in Tolima, Colombia, to judge public opinion on the establishment of activities by an international mining conglomerate ie the Colosa (the Giant) gold mine. In this article study is made of the referendum, and emphasis given to its linkages with wider regional, national and Latin American efforts to anticipate damage and derail projects for resource extraction. Recognising the techniques and networks, and similar expressions of identity and territoriality, expressed in other campaigns against extraction, resource sovereignty is suggested as an approach to interpret the motivations for and dynamics of recent popular consultations.

La oscilante doctrina del Tribunal Constitucional sobre la definición de las consultas populares por la vía de referéndum. Una revisión crítica a través de cuatro sentencias

Con su Sentencia 31/2015, sobre la Ley catalana de consultas populares no referendarias y participación ciudadana, el Tribunal Constitucional completa un conjunto de pronunciamientos doctrinales sobre el referéndum que comprende, principalmente, otras tres relevantes Sentencias (la 103/2008, la 31/2010 y la 42/2014). En el presente artículo se examinan críticamente estas cuatro Resoluciones que, si bien contienen aspectos que expresan una doctrina dubitativa e incluso confusa, cierran por ahora la jurisprudencia básica para la delimitación del género consultas populares, el reparto competencial en la materia y, sobre todo, los criterios para la determinación de las materias que pueden ser objeto de consulta.<br />

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

A Gestão Social no Contexto do Programa Territórios da Cidadania: os casos dos Municípios de Braga, Campo Novo e Coronel Bicaco - RS.

This article analyzes the processes of social management in Rio Grande do Sul state municipalities of Braga, Campo Novo and Coronel Bicaco, as well as its relationship with the federal program Territories of Citizenship. The object of the study are three municipalities that integrate the Territory of Citizenship Noroeste Colonial. The objective was to verify what advances have social management produced in terms of citizenship in studied environments. Program data are described for the country, state and region and the economic and social data of the three municipalities focused in the research are analyzed. Based on interviews with managers, policy makers and social actors, became evident a great distance from the Territories of Citizenship program. Internal relationships of social management are almost exclusively coming from municipal councils and according to the popular consultations coordinated by the Regional Development Councils. The other constituted relationships are more typically a practice of strategic management, monological and technobureaucratic than a practice of social management in the perspective of a deliberative citizenship. Key-Words: social management; territories of citizenship; participation; citizenship

<em>Ripe or Rotting:</em> Civil Society in the Casamance Conflict

The article explores the role of traditional and modern actors as well as traditional methods in finding a durable solution to the separatist Casamance conflict, which has experienced an uptick in hostilities since 2009. In 2007, the government named a group of traditional actors, the Comité des Sages, as its official interlocutor with the Movement of Democratic Forces in the Casamance (MFDC), which was a armed rebel movement against the government of Senegal. However, the approach did not advance the peace process because their base was too limited, their practices of buying access to the MFDC were not sustainable, and the perception of skimming undermined their credibility. Traditional methods will have a role to play, namely, the reversing of oaths taken by combatants when they joined the MFDC, once a large-scale demobilization of forces is possible. Modern and traditional civil society actors have played a role in peacebuilding efforts in Casamance. They include micro-level village associations with localized access to nearby MFDC bases or combatants from their village, meso-level Senegalese NGOs that implement programs in different parts of the region, and macro-level national organizations and individuals based in Dakar and the Casamance with access to high-level decision-makers. Collaboration among these actors balances their strengths and weaknesses, but their interests must align for the collaboration to succeed. An MFDC call for a referendum on independence, akin to the one held in Southern Sudan in January 2011, was firmly rejected, but a more interesting parallel lies in the popular consultation process identified in Sudan’s 2004 peace agreement for the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states and suggested in the December 2004 agreement. Popular consultations allow citizens to indicate if the agreement has been implemented satisfactorily and should be the definitive solution, while the political conference discusses root causes of the conflict and proposes solutions.

La survivance d'un système électoral sous le Consulat et l'Empire

Josiane Bourguet-Rouveyre, The Survival of the Electoral System under the Consulate and Empire It might seem paradoxical to suggest that on the issue of elections and plebiscites, the Napoleonic period is the heir of the Revolution, for the revolutionary referendum has often been contrasted with the Bonapartist plebiscite, and the democratic forms of political participation under the First Republic with rigidity of the Imperial system. But a study of the electoral system and popular consultations under the Consulate and Empire clearly shows a continuity with the revolutionary decade : the regime only codified and standardized earlier practices, and, as under the Revolution, the cantonal assembly remained the foundation of the system. The absence of debate and public liberties did not prevent electoral participation ; rather, this is even higher in the assemblies of the arrondissement and the department where the notables met. Even under the Empire, Napoleon had to conserve forms of representation, tying them closely to the Nation, models borrowed as much from the Constitutional Monarchy as from the Republic.

Norway: Madisonianism Reborn

This article discusses citizen control in Norwegian parliamentary democracy, and specifically the changes that have recently taken place. Around 1960 Norway had reached a constitutional form that, apart from the consequences of proportional representation, looked much like a Westminster system. From that point on, however, Norwegian democracy has generally moved away from this model. A series of minority governments has given rise to parliamentary reassertion. The Norwegian party system has fragmented, and the individual parties have atrophied as mass membership organizations. A wave of corporatism and later a heightened assertiveness on the part of the judiciary have helped to contain parliamentary power. Two critical European Union membership referendums in 1972 and 1994 have firmly established the role of direct democracy in critical political decisions. And despite the results of these two popular consultations, international constraints have become ever more significant.Compared with most others in Europe, however, Norway is a relatively unconstrained polity. There are few important ways in which the citizenry is partitioned into multiple democratic principals, and the country is a reasonable fit to the parliamentary ideal type of an unfettered hierarchy controlled by the median voter. At the same time, the trend is unmistakably one towards greater policy‐making complexity and increasing constraints on policy makers. Norway's reluctant but seemingly inevitable incorporation into a larger Europe is the greatest and most decisive of these constraints, but it is not the only one. Judicial institutions are likely to play an increasingly important political role, and direct democracy perhaps likewise. And although central bank independence has met with greater scepticism than in most other European countries, it is not likely to be reversed. All in all, it seems that Norwegian parliamentary governance is becoming at least a little more Madisonian and a little less Westminsterian.

Turning votes into territories: boundary referendums in theory and practice

The involvement of electors in the determination of a boundary separating states in conflict was introduced to international relations after the First World War in order to resolve disagreements concerning Germany, Austria, Denmark, Poland, and Yugoslavia. No such popular consultations took place after the Second World War when European borders were shifted by the rulers of the time, borders that became frozen during the Cold War. Now that that War is over, one can assume a return to the democratic evolution begun in Avignon 1791 and expanded in Schleswig 1920. With that expectation in mind, the article considers ways of improving the procedures that have been used thus far to partition territories by means of popular referendums. To help consider various solutions and select appropriate procedures, special attention is given to Schleswig 1920, and Jura 1974.

The Hitler Referenda

Although the ultimate form of the National Socialist political system in Germany is not yet clear, certain institutions are emerging which bid fair to make more than a passing claim to perdurance in that system. Among these, surprisingly enough, is the popular referendum. Apparently doomed to obsolescence towards the end of the republican period because it was proving to be superfluous in a representative régime and too radically democratic, it has suddenly been accepted as a leading constitutional practice in a Germany which is dedicated to the extirpation of political democracy. In somewhat more than ten months, the Hitler cabinet has twice requested and received popular verdicts at the polls, a record of nation-wide popular consultations which is exactly equivalent to that of the fourteen years of the Republic.